I think Apple's not done quite yet, but I don't think we'll see anything like the days Jobs was back in control. We'll probably see more fark-ups like the iOS6 Apple Maps fiasco, more "me, too" designs that are more afterthoughts, and a drop in interest by people who realize their idol is no longer alive and running things in Cupertino.

Apple's quality will probably remain high for a few more years, as it is a hallmark of the brand, but their declining ability to maintain profit margins in the face of competition will eventually turn the company into a more diversified version of RIM; a company many people will still like, but whose imprint on the world of technology is dwindling to a mere footnote in history.

ProfessorOhki:fallingcow: Personally, I hate drawer view (using the term correctly now, I think) and practically everything else about managing apps on my Android phone. It's one more step between me and having my app where I want it. Uninstalling especially takes probably 8-10x as long (since it takes like 4 seconds on iOS), assuming I can remember where the fark I have to go to uninstall things and don't have to fumble around for it, so I'm more reluctant to try out apps in the first place. If I can remember the name of my app to browse for it alphabetically in the drawer, I can just search instead (on iOS).

Trying to remember, does vanilla Android not have "long-click the app icon, click uninstall" mechanism or something? Alright, let's give this a try - looking at the app icon in the list of apps, aaaand... done in 6 seconds from first tap. 1/6 of the time was the initial long-click.

Apparently there is a search option in the apps panel. Again, not sure if in vanilla.

My 2.3 doesn't. Click and drag lets me remove it from the screen, but on Android that's different from deleting.

Click and hold on the full app list (drawer?) lets me drag it to my actual screen, but that's it.

I think there's some damn app-management submenu about 5 clicks in that lets me browse a <i>different</i> list of all my apps, open up an info screen about them individually, and the delete them from there (if they're not locked by the vendor--I had this thing rooted until 2.3 finally got released for it about the time 4.1 came out, but haven't bothered to go through that process again because it really wasn't worth it)

Looks like there's finally a Cyanogenmod release for the Galaxy S 4G (which is apparently distinct and quite different from any other Galaxy S-series phone, and also kinda rare from what I gather) so maybe I should give that a try.

Or I'll just save myself an evening of dicking with my phone, live with this for now, and buy an iPhone 5 after the 6 or 5s or whatever gets announced, since this thing's getting kind of old anyway. Only time will tell!

theurge14:fallingcow: Dokushin: theurge14: I really dig the freedom to download malware from all sorts of app repositories.

Ah, yes, any app not Approved by Apple is automatically full of malware. Unclean, you might call it. Anyone not Approved by Apple is untrustworthy, and you should be prevented from installing their software on your phone, because there is absolutely no such thing as a phone app without malware that's not Approved by Apple.

You must live in constant fear.

The whole Apple ecosystem is about making Grandma (or any non-geek, really) feel safe buying and using software. Many of the measures taken toward that end also make Apple money (the app store, in-app purchases, etc.) but nearly all absolutely do improve the experience for typical users.

Grandma can't get an email telling her about this awesome iOS App that she should download, JUST CLICK HERE! and end up with a virus. If an app asks for money for something, it has to do it openly and it can't take your credit card details directly. Grandma doesn't biatch to her friends about how awful her iPhone is because the battery runs out in two hours and the (carrier-installed) messaging apps and browsers are pieces of shiat. And so on.

There are good reasons for most of what Apple does, but all that many tech-savvy people can see is "zomg Apple hates users and loves money!" Yes, you can't run a webserver on iOS. Buy something else if that's what you want to use your phone for.

Just call me Grandma because I don't want to have to run McAfee AV on my phone.

You crave safety. You are a thumbsucker. You are less than human. Your every "original" thought is an act of hopeless self-delusion. Someday soon, god willing, some thoughtful person will cave in your windpipe with a Panasonic Toughbook and end the charade you call your existence.

serpent_sky:Endive Wombat: I was honestly considering an iPhone, but when I held it side by side with the other phones on the market, I just could not do it. The main reason I stuck with Android was because of screen size. To me at least, the iPhone screen is comically small by comparison to most of the other offerings out there running Android or Windows OSs. I ended up getting the Note 2 and love it. I will not go back to something smaller.

And the only reason I have an iPhone 4S is it seemed to be the last phone that wasn't comically huge to me. I have small hands, and women's clothing isn't exactly known for its copious pocket space. I didn't want a huge phone, and the iPhone was the smallest of the batch that do what I need/want a phone to do when my contract was up.

I was going to get an Android something or another because I like my boyfriend's phone and some of the customizations that he can do (like text sounds that aren't the same as everyone else in my office) but they looked like clown props to me. In less than a year, phones got way too big.

Seriously a case of to each one's own.

I guess you should ignore all the Android phones that are "normal" in size for you. Considering Android is the land of options, I find it hard to believe that you couldn't find an Android phone that was a good fit for you in terms of size. If you wiki "comparison of Android devices", it indicates there's a ton of phones from 2.5" to 5.5".

Incidentally, what are you going to do when the time to replace your current phone and you've invested money into the platform? Force yourself to use the clown prop-sized i5?

i upped my meds-up yours:You crave safety. You are a thumbsucker. You are less than human. Your every "original" thought is an act of hopeless self-delusion. Someday soon, god willing, some thoughtful person will cave in your windpipe with a Panasonic Toughbook and end the charade you call your existence.

Well, I guess you could say a company might seem less cool when, to save money, it outsources to an foreign company with troublesome work ethics. The whole hoarding billions in cash reserves also reduces their cool points. Just a bit, you know.

ProfessorOhki:Trying to remember, does vanilla Android not have "long-click the app icon, click uninstall" mechanism or something? Alright, let's give this a try - looking at the app icon in the list of apps, aaaand... done in 6 seconds from first tap. 1/6 of the time was the initial long-click.

Apparently there is a search option in the apps panel. Again, not sure if in vanilla.

In Android 4.1+, if you open your app drawer and long-click an app icon, a little trash can icon appears and you can drag the app into the trash can.

"iOS means you do whatever Apple says and just want to look cool" is roughly equal to "Android devices have malware and two hour battery", is what I'm saying.

Yeah, that's true.

I'm hoping Google takes more direct control over Android to at least keep the devices from sucking out-of-the-box (thanks to the carriers) and requiring effort and knowledge to just make them not suck, let alone do anything special. At least get rid of the "I had to install Cyanogenmod to get my brand new phone to survive a whole day without charging" factor or "oh, 4.1 is out? Hey look, an update for my phone to 2.3!" crap that the carriers have been pulling. A big chunk of what sucks about Android is the carriers.

kab:i upped my meds-up yours: You crave safety. You are a thumbsucker. You are less than human. Your every "original" thought is an act of hopeless self-delusion. Someday soon, god willing, some thoughtful person will cave in your windpipe with a Panasonic Toughbook and end the charade you call your existence.

Battery last for three daysYou can throw it at a dogNo pics, texting sucks, no email

If you want to call me, call meor not

Amen, mine can sometimes go a week without needing a charge and it costs me virtually nothing to maintain it. Mind you I pretty much never use it any ways but screw this keeping up with the jones phones and all the ridiculous bullshiat surrounding them. People are free to pay sometimes $100/month for three years plus a few hundred for the phones, I'll happily spend that money on more important things like beer, whores and blackjack.

imfallen_angel:Endive Wombat: I would like to see apple take a stab at the DSLR market. I mean really, you've only got 2 choices when it comes to cameras - Nikon and Canon. In reflecting back on their track record over the last say 10 years, I think that they could do it well.

Although everything from the raw file formats, to the connectors, to the types of memory cards it uses, to tripod mounts will all be proprietary, unique, and unnecessarily expensive.-------

I was going to say that if you really think that there's only Canon and Nikon as the choice for DSLR, you need to read more before making such a limited comment, but odds are, you're not a camera/photography person and the points would be moot.

^this, and btw, DSLRs are failrly complex electro-mechanical systems -- not some bandwagon a random tech company can just hop on.

LesserEvil:I think Apple's not done quite yet, but I don't think we'll see anything like the days Jobs was back in control.

The products remain pretty much the same as they always have. The only things Jobs brought to Apple was the ability to manipulate the public. Without that people are slowly seeing the products for what they are.

fallingcow:ProfessorOhki: fallingcow: Personally, I hate drawer view (using the term correctly now, I think) and practically everything else about managing apps on my Android phone. It's one more step between me and having my app where I want it. Uninstalling especially takes probably 8-10x as long (since it takes like 4 seconds on iOS), assuming I can remember where the fark I have to go to uninstall things and don't have to fumble around for it, so I'm more reluctant to try out apps in the first place. If I can remember the name of my app to browse for it alphabetically in the drawer, I can just search instead (on iOS).

Trying to remember, does vanilla Android not have "long-click the app icon, click uninstall" mechanism or something? Alright, let's give this a try - looking at the app icon in the list of apps, aaaand... done in 6 seconds from first tap. 1/6 of the time was the initial long-click.

Apparently there is a search option in the apps panel. Again, not sure if in vanilla.

My 2.3 doesn't. Click and drag lets me remove it from the screen, but on Android that's different from deleting.

Click and hold on the full app list (drawer?) lets me drag it to my actual screen, but that's it.

I think there's some damn app-management submenu about 5 clicks in that lets me browse a <i>different</i> list of all my apps, open up an info screen about them individually, and the delete them from there (if they're not locked by the vendor--I had this thing rooted until 2.3 finally got released for it about the time 4.1 came out, but haven't bothered to go through that process again because it really wasn't worth it)

Looks like there's finally a Cyanogenmod release for the Galaxy S 4G (which is apparently distinct and quite different from any other Galaxy S-series phone, and also kinda rare from what I gather) so maybe I should give that a try.

Or I'll just save myself an evening of dicking with my phone, live with this for now, and buy an iPhone 5 after the 6 or 5s o ...

heh. and they say that apple is all about marketing. see samsung's $~12B marketing spending vs. apple's $1B.

[www.asymco.com image 850x322]

At least Samsung products don't attempt to prey on weak people's desire for ease of use and "safety." They recognize that the internet is a man's business, and that men are willing to take on the risks of virii and blue screens of death. For that, AFAIC, they could spend $12 trillion a year on marketing and not have to be called to account for it.

i upped my meds-up yours:At least Samsung products don't attempt to prey on weak people's desire for ease of use and "safety." They recognize that the internet is a man's business, and that men are willing to take on the risks of virii and blue screens of death

This may be the dumbest thing ever posted on fark. Or poe's law, I can't tell which.

bingethinker:That's it, shills and brainwashed losers! Keep repeating this propaganda and eventually that will make it true.

/I think I just sprained something rolling my eyes

Black-Nosed Buddha

A nun who was searching for enlightenment made a statue of Buddha and covered it with gold leaf. Wherever she went she carried this golden Buddha with her. Years passed and, still carrying her Buddha, the nun came to live in a small temple in a country where there were many Buddhas, each one with its own particular shrine. The nun wished to burn incense before her golden Buddha. Not liking the idea of the perfume straying to the others, she devised a funnel through which the smoke would ascend only to her statue. This blackened the nose of the golden Buddha, making it especially ugly.

i upped my meds-up yours:At least Samsung products don't attempt to prey on weak people's desire for ease of use and "safety." They recognize that the internet is a man's business, and that men are willing to take on the risks of virii and blue screens of death. For that, AFAIC, they could spend $12 trillion a year on marketing and not have to be called to account for it.

shiate : heh. and they say that apple is all about marketing. see samsung's $~12B marketing spending vs. apple's $1B.

What products does "Samsung Electronics" include?

If it includes all of the products that are produced by the Samsung Electronics division, then I would expect a larger marketing budget because Apple doesn't make Televisions, Digital Cameras or Washing Machines.

i upped my meds-up yours:At least Samsung products don't attempt to prey on weak people's desire for ease of use and "safety." They recognize that the internet is a man's business, and that men are willing to take on the risks of virii and blue screens of death. For that, AFAIC, they could spend $12 trillion a year on marketing and not have to be called to account for it.

elchip:If I wanted a phone with an interface that looked like it was designed 6 years ago, I'd get an iPhone.

(And if I wanted a phone with an interface that looked like it was designed 16 years ago, I'd get a Windows Phone.)

Hey the interface of the Windows Phone is pretty slick. I actually miss it now that I have my S3 but it's only because I was so used to how it was. It's intergration was very nice, as much as I hate Zune, Keis can't hold a candle to it. How the hell can't it sync right is beyond me, for pictures and videos. I tell it to sync but it doesn't, I have the sync when Keis opens but nothing. All that it is good for is making a backup and even that is garbage you can't take a phone image with the software unlike Zune which will.

Hate WP all you want but they do have a good platform and good software to go with it.

servlet:i upped my meds-up yours: At least Samsung products don't attempt to prey on weak people's desire for ease of use and "safety." They recognize that the internet is a man's business, and that men are willing to take on the risks of virii and blue screens of death. For that, AFAIC, they could spend $12 trillion a year on marketing and not have to be called to account for it.

lordargent:shiate : heh. and they say that apple is all about marketing. see samsung's $~12B marketing spending vs. apple's $1B.

What products does "Samsung Electronics" include?

If it includes all of the products that are produced by the Samsung Electronics division, then I would expect a larger marketing budget because Apple doesn't make Televisions, Digital Cameras or Washing Machines.

then why is apple the only company that needs to innovate? why doesn't samsung need to?

Apple is supposed to be the one that does all of that. We've been hearing about the Apple TV (not their little set-top box, an actual TV) for months now, and there's nothing that's come of it. The iPad and iPad Mini are nice... but for less, I can get an Android tablet that does the same thing, or for just a little more, I can get a Windows 8 tablet that will do a LOT more. The iPhone has, spec-wise, fallen behind its Android and Windows Phone competition. I think consumers are getting to the point where they see tablets as more "mature" devices, and for me at least, the iPad just won't cut it anymore. They've created markets with the iPhone and iPad, which is what they have done historically, but Apple has only once been good at defending a market that it created (iTunes), and they just aren't the only fish in the bowl here.

They really need someone who's got the inspirational spark of Steve Jobs again... preferably without the douchebaggery this time, but I won't hold my breath. Cook just doesn't have it in him.

serpent_sky:Endive Wombat: I was honestly considering an iPhone, but when I held it side by side with the other phones on the market, I just could not do it. The main reason I stuck with Android was because of screen size. To me at least, the iPhone screen is comically small by comparison to most of the other offerings out there running Android or Windows OSs. I ended up getting the Note 2 and love it. I will not go back to something smaller.

And the only reason I have an iPhone 4S is it seemed to be the last phone that wasn't comically huge to me. I have small hands, and women's clothing isn't exactly known for its copious pocket space. I didn't want a huge phone, and the iPhone was the smallest of the batch that do what I need/want a phone to do when my contract was up.

I was going to get an Android something or another because I like my boyfriend's phone and some of the customizations that he can do (like text sounds that aren't the same as everyone else in my office) but they looked like clown props to me. In less than a year, phones got way too big.

Seriously a case of to each one's own.

I have little baby hands and I used to think the same way until I actually got a new phone. I went from a tiny ass flip phone to a phone that's roughly the size of a iphone 5. You get used to it in about thirty minutes and the screen real estate is amazing. I almost won't even use my wife's iphone 4 because it's so tiny.

Dissociater:theurge14: For the last farking time, it's not about "being cool". It's about having something that works exceptionally well. Yes, there are always the handful of idiots who really do think it's just about a status symbol, but the rest of us are glad to use a product that doesn't suck balls in some major way. Brand loyalty is built up over time when the whole "doesn't suck balls" thing is discovered to be true for a number of different products.

These "tech reporters" who write click-gathering articles like this aren't getting it. "Cool factor" is not only factor here, or even the major one. Otherwise all the products listed would've been chucked away and rejected by people long ago. iPods have been around for 12 years now. iPhone has been around for 6 and more or less looks about the same. The current Macbook form factor has been around for about 7 years. Same with the iMac line. "Cool factor" doesn't apply to that sort of timeline.

I'd buy that if the average person put in any sort of thought or research into figuring out the best product for them instead of just what's on TV the most.

Who cares? Phones are all basically the same now, except for some silly stats that only about 3% of users actually care about or will even utilize to the fullest extent.

Tim Cook's Apple hasn't released anything yet that's obviously anti-What Would Steve Do. Past example: the Macintosh II, which began development deliberately hidden from Jobs and was released a couple years after he'd been ousted.

Apple is starting to look risk-averse. Steve Jobs launched some bombs: (iPod Hi-Fi, Power Mac G4 Cube, buttonless version of iPod shuffle). Apple needs to show it's trying stuff and not afraid to fail.